270 



• KNOWi^EDGE ♦ 



[Nov. 2, li 



variant of that inexhaustible theme of all mythology, the 

 battle of Day and Night ; Hagar flying before the incon- 

 stant sun and the jealous moon. And so on througli the 

 whole range of leading characters in Hebrew history ; Cain 

 and Abel, in which the critic overlooks the more likely ex- 

 planation of the story as a quarrel between nomads and 

 tillers of the soil ; Jephthah; in which the sun-god liills at 

 mid-day the dawn, his own ofl'sprtng : Samson, or more cor- 

 rectly Shimshon, from the Hebrew word for sun, the inci- 

 dents of whose life, as expounded by Professor Steinthal,* 

 are more clearly typical of the labours of the sun ; Jonah 

 and the fish, a story long ago connected with the myth of 

 Herakles and Hisione ; "as on occasion of the storm the 

 dragon or serpent swallows the sun, so when he sets he is 

 swallowed by a mighty fish, waiting for him at the bottom 

 of the sea. Then when he appears again on the horizon, 

 he is spat out on the shore by the sea-monster, "f 



These bare references must suffice to show that there 

 is in Hebrew literature a large body of material which must 

 undergo the sifting and the criticism which has been 

 applied with success to Indo-European and non-Aryan 

 myth. This done, the Semitic race will contribute its 

 share of evidence in support of those conditions under 

 which it has been the main purpose of these papers to show 

 that myth has its birth and growth. 



THE HIMALAYAS AND THE ALPS.i 



LOMBARDY and the valley of the Po, with the 

 southern side of the Alps, presents somewhat similar 

 physical features. A large area of about the size of the 

 north-west Punjab, once a part of the miocene sea, is 

 occupied by a remnant of rocks of that age, considerably 

 elevated and tilted, but not to such an extent as those of 

 the Himalayas. Near Turin these dip towards the 

 mountains, and a very short examination shows the un- 

 doubted glacial character of some of the beds ; and as the 

 whole formation is marine, their large, sharply-angular 

 material, much of which is Jurassic limestone, was pro- 

 bably transported from the adjacent mountains by the 

 agency of ice in a shallow sea. After the great crushing 

 and alteration of the previous outlines of the whole 

 country, another sea filled the basin of the Po, and pliocene 

 deposits were laid down in a sinking area extending to the 

 base of the mountains all round the new bay or gulf. Re- 

 elevation again set in, and with it, or soon after it, the 

 advent of another and the last glacial period. 



But the bounds of the pliocene sea extended even farther 

 than the base of the mountains. At the south end of the 

 Lago d' Orta, well within the hills sheltering under the 

 isolated porphyry hill of Buccione, and 280 feet above the 

 present lake (or 1,-500 feet above the sea), I discovered 

 this summer a patch of pliocene sand and clays with marine 

 shells in excellent preservation. A thickness of sixty -four 

 feet of the section is exposed, capped by moraine matter ; 

 its base was not seen, and the beds dip north. This 

 remnant tells us a good deal. From where it rests there 

 is a clear horizon to the north down the lake to the junc- 

 tion of its river with the Toce — unmistakable evidence 

 that these beds must have extended far in this northern 

 direction, and that long, fiord-like arms of the sea stretched 

 up as far as Domo d' Ossola on one side, and Bellinzona on the 

 other. This marine bed is far above the level of the Lago 



* " Goldziher," pp. 302, ff. t Ih. p. 103. 



X From the address by Col. Godwin Austen, president of the 

 Geological section, British Association. 



Maggiore, but I also found marine shells of pleistocene age 

 112 ft. above that lake near Arona. Before the last great 

 elevation of the Alpine chain, the old line of sea-coast, 

 therefore, ran even high up the long deep valleys of Mag- 

 giore, Como, Garda, &c., during the early pliocene period ; 

 the mountains then, quite as high as now, enjoying a warm 

 moist climate, not a glacial one. Then came the gradual 

 but uneven elevation of the whole area, including the 

 miocene hills south of the Po, and lacustrine and estuary 

 conditions prevailed over much of the plain country. The 

 lapse of time was probably enormous, and as the land rose 

 and the sea retij'ed the climate gradually became cooler, 

 and ushered in the glacial period. I do not think it would 

 be an exaggeration to add another 5,000 feet to the Alpine 

 peaks of that time, which would give them an altitude 

 equal to the Zaskar range of the north-west Himalayas of 

 the present day. 



With the change and the increased volume of the moun- 

 tain torrents, the destruction of the upraised marine 

 pliocene beds commenced, and finally culminated in the 

 extreme extension of the glaciers even into the plains. They 

 scoured out almost completely the whole of these deposits, 

 which then filled the great valleys and the country at the 

 base of the mountains, to redistribute them again over the 

 plain of the Po, and silt up what remained there of the old 

 estuary or gulf towards the east. 



The denudation of this formation has been enormous 

 along the base of the Alps, and only mere remnants are to 

 be found. It is easily seen that their preservation is purely 

 due to the accidental position in places where the great 

 denuding force — viz , the advance of ice from the moun- 

 tains — has been unable to touch them ; in other instances 

 the early deposition of moraine matter upon them has 

 acted like a shield, and prevented their entire destruction. 

 Such examples are well seen near Ivrea, in the well-known 

 section in the gorge of the Chieusella near Stombinella, and 

 in the moraine near San Giovanni. 



The scattered remnants of the pliocene formation south 

 of the Alps, which took perhaps thousands of j-ears to lay 

 down, show well how soon a great formation, together with 

 the preserved remains of the fauna living at the time, may- 

 be completely destroyed by subsequent denuding forces. 

 Similar destruction must have occurred over and over 

 again in past geological ages, and shows clearly how the 

 scanty broken record can be accounted for. It is an esta- 

 blished fact that the great valleys of the Alps and Hima- 

 layas existed much in their present form during miocene 

 times, and they may owe their excavation partly to 

 the glacial action of that period, when these mountain 

 slopes rose from the plain or margin of the ancient sea, far 

 in front of the present line of slope, and were far higher 

 than now. 



Depression has steadily continued in the delta of the Po, 

 as in the Ganges at Calcutta, for at Venice borings showed 

 depression of land surface to an extent of 400 ft., and they 

 did not reach the base of the formation. It is not impro- 

 bable that during the earlier extension of the glaciers into 

 the ]\Iaggiore basin, the sea still had access to it ; this 

 would have greatly aided in the removal of the marine 

 deposits, and then the deeper erosion of its bed near the 

 Borromean Islands, so well put forward by Sir Andrew 

 Ramsey. 



When we see the gigantic scouring which glaciers have 

 effected in the hardest rocks on the sides and bottoms of 

 valleys, when we know for certain the enormous thickness 

 they reached in the Alps, I do not doubt their capability 

 of deepening a rock basin very considerably, or their power 

 to move forward over and against slopes so low as 2 deg. to 

 3 deg. The earliest extreme extension of the glaciers was 



